Bulgaria

The Soviet Occupation

When Soviet troops arrived in Bulgaria, they were welcomed by
the populace as liberators from German occupation. On September 9,
1944, five days after the Soviet declaration of war, a Fatherland
Front coalition deposed the temporary government in a bloodless
coup. Headed by Kimon Georgiev of Zveno, the new administration
included four communists, five members of Zveno, two social
democrats, and four agrarians. Although in the minority, the
communists had been the driving force in forming the coalition as
an underground resistance organization in 1942. The presence of the
Red Army, which remained in Bulgaria until 1947, strengthened
immeasurably the communist position in dealing with the Allies and
rival factions in the coalition. At this point, many noncommunist
Bulgarians placed their hopes on renewed relations with the Soviet
Union; in their view, both Germany and the Allies had been
discredited by the events of the previous fifteen years. In 1945
the Allies themselves expected that a benign Soviet Union would
continue the wartime alliance through the period of postwar East
European realignment.

The armistice signed by Bulgaria with the Soviet Union in
October 1944 surrendered all wartime territorial gains except
Southern Dobruja; this meant that Macedonia returned to Yugoslavia
and Thrace to Greece. The peace agreement also established a
Soviet-dominated Allied Control Commission to run Bulgaria until
conclusion of a peace treaty. Overall war damage to Bulgaria was
moderate compared to that in other European countries, and the
Soviet Union demanded no reparations. On the other hand, Bulgaria
held the earliest and most widespread war crimes trial in postwar
Europe; almost 3,000 were executed as war criminals. Bulgaria
emerged from the war with no identifiable political structure; the
party system had dissolved in 1934, replaced by the pragmatic
balancing of political factions in Boris's royal dictatorship. This
condition and the duration of the war in Europe eight months after
Bulgaria's surrender gave the communists ample opportunity to
exploit their favorable strategic position in Bulgarian politics.